In a constantly developing and ever changing corporate world, one of the basic ingredients for its proper is being a 'team player'.
One of the best ways of being a team player is to share job responsibilities with your colleagues. For instance, if you see your colleague has to sit late to meet a pressing deadline, you can jump in as a team member and help him out. By taking this step, you are not only helping in increasing team productivity, but also reducing the work burden and reaping benefits from the act. Sharing the workload with your colleagues helps in building a healthy work environment and creating good professional relationships. It also has a role to play in molding you into a better professional.
While in most cases the responsibility to ensure that work gets shared equally lies with the senior management or the immediate reporting head, often organizations would prefer employees taking the initiative help out others. As Naina Acharya, Project Manager, IndiQuest Research Services says, "The responsibility of ensuring that all jobs are effectively and efficiently shared among each team simply does not lie entirely with the Project Manager. Managers might often allocate more work to a single team member as his skill sets are more suitable and the team member is also known to complete his work flawlessly. This often leads to that particular team member being overburdened with work. During this situation, if one team member jumps in and helps out his colleague, he not only helps to relieve the burden but also benefits as the manager takes notice of his action and mark him as a team player. This would then reflect during his appraisals."
Over work often affects the productivity of the employees as well as the team. If a team member is overburdened with tasks, it affects his or her productivity in the long-run. Also, that employee would not be able to focus on a certain tasks, and apply his skills in the right task due to paucity of time. Another aspect which also happens is that the remaining team members become complacent and lethargic which reduces the overall team productivity to a large extent. Therefore, to avoid the potential loss, work load should be shared equally among the team members.
The sharing of responsibilities is more needed now as many companies are just coming out of recession. During the recession, companies had to face tighter budgets and freeze recruitment which led to shortage of staff due to which employees who were retained were overburdened. Thus, it is during these times that the entire team's skill sets are set to test. Celia D' souza, (name changed as per request) an HR with a reputed digital marketing company says, "In a team, the very essence of teamwork lies on its shared responsibility and collective accountability. A team member should feel that he belongs to a team and this should result in the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. The employee should understand the company's goals and objectives, belong to a specific department and have a job function. It helps the employee to feel unified with other organization members and helps to establish team spirit. This in turn helps to accomplish the overall objectives. Employees should always try to look at the bigger picture and drive their actions accordingly."
Courtesy by: Priyanka Chowdhury Ahmedabad Mirror, Mon, 27-12-2010